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It’s still a mad MAD world, but for how much longer?

It’s still a mad MAD world, but for how much longer? The Canberra Times

HAMISH MCDONALD ASIA-PACIFIC EDITOR

7/02/2009 BARACK OBAMA’S inaugural pledge to “work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat” might see an early step taken – perhaps even this weekend, when Vice-President Joe Biden addresses a European security conference – by announcing a halt to America’s controversial missile defence program on the Europe-Middle East front……………………………But even with the suggested cutback of US and Russian arsenals to 1000 warheads apiece and halting construction of missile defence radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama has a major task of persuasion ahead to convince potential adversaries, especially Russia and China, that the US is renouncing an unprecedented amount of power…………………….Specialists Keir Lieber and Daryl Press in the journal International Security . “Today the US stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis-a-vis its plausible great power adversaries. For the first time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a nuclear first strike………………..the US has been upgrading the accuracy and power of its reduced warhead numbers.Some US nuclear programs “are hard to explain with any mission other than a nuclear first strike on a major power adversary”, Lieber and Press say…………………..Even if the Americans have no intention of using their first-strike capability, the Russians and Chinese could be led by the perception that they are at risk of a successful first disarming strike to short-term responses that are destabilising in themselves.

It’s still a mad MAD world, but for how much longer? – World News – World – General – The Canberra Times

Tags: Ambassadorto address U.S. foreign policy, nuclear disarmament

February 7, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized